As an example of a general communication system for distributing information in the related art, web browsing over the Internet can be mentioned.
A communication procedure in web browsing of the related art is shown in FIG. 1.
In this procedure, when a terminal station sends a demand for provision of information (demand for content) to a contents server, the contents server immediately responds to this and transmits the requested information content (requested content) to the terminal station.
In the above communication system, however, since it is based on real-time communication immediately responding to a request for providing information, for example as shown in FIG. 2, the traffic load widely varies such as with the amount sharply increasing during a certain time band and oppositely the amount largely decreasing during a time band, for example, at the night.
Accordingly, it suffers from the disadvantage that communication facilities are not in use during the night time and other time bands when the communication traffic is low, so the communication facilities are not efficiently used.
Further, it suffers from the disadvantage of the difficulty in sufficient improvement of the efficiency of utilization of the communication facilities because a network operator often determines a traffic load of a communication system in order to provide an acceptable quality of service during the time bands when the traffic load is large.